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I rather enjoyed reading Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety which covers a few of these events in more deta
by tikhonj 4y ago
I rather enjoyed reading Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety which covers a few of these events in more detail, as well as the 1980 Damascus Titan missile explosion[1] and some broader history about the security and management of US nuclear weapons.
[1]: The missile itself exploded, not its nuclear payload. See Wikipedia for an overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_ex...
- emeril 4y agoI enjoyed Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 even more!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- imwillofficial 4y agoIN SPAAAAAYCE
- throwaway742 4y agoRed Alert 2 > Red Alert 3
- jasongill 4y agohttps://cncnet.org/red-alert https://cncnet.org/red-alert You'll love the fact that you can still play Red Alert online for free!
- emeril 4y agotoo bad there was a slower paced more casual version - yellow alert or defcon 5
- amrb 4y ago> The initial explosion catapulted the 740-ton silo door away from the silo. > The W53 thermonuclear warhead landed about 100 feet (30 m) from the launch complex's entry gate. Crazy to move that much weight and Lucky to have the warhead intact.
- golem14 4y agoIt was probably not "intact". Just still contained all the nuclear material.
- wishfish 4y agoWas 9 years old and living in Little Rock at the time. Just 20 or 30 miles away. Remember the news reports and my proto-survivalist mom going into action. Telling me everything we’d have to do if the nuke went off. Had relatives who lived not too far off from Damascus. I remember driving that way past the silos. Even as a kid, you could easily pick out the silos. They were hidden behind foliage with no identifying signs. But each and every one had the exact same driveway and culverts. Very different than the farm entrances and dirt roads. It was a weird time. Driving past a bunch of possible world-enders on the way to see Aunt Gloria. That scene in The Day After, when the ICBMs were launched from the silos based out of a farm, hit me particularly hard. That’s what rural central Arkansas would have looked like.
- lelandfe 4y agoLooking up broken arrow incidents is pretty horrifying. Wikipedia's "military nuclear accidents" list isn't even a full list - just notable ones - and it's still absurdly long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accid... July 28, 1957, two nukes jettisoned from airplane into the Atlantic, never recovered. February 5, 1958, bomber collides mid-air, jettisons nuke off coast of Georgia, never recovered. July 6, 1959, cargo plane crashes on takeoff, explosives do not go off in the fire. January 24, 1961, bomber catches fire while in air, two hydrogen bombs dropped over North Carolina, one comes close to detonation. And on, and on, and on. America in the Cold War kept nuclear weapons continuously aloft along the Soviet border, but the program experienced so many crashes that it had to be scuttled. In the final one, the nuclear payload ruptured: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash
- coolspot 4y ago> two hydrogen bombs dropped over North Carolina, one comes close to detonation I think this part is BS. Nuclear weapons don’t detonate on accident, it requires delicate synchronized process, guarded by authorization codes which aren’t normally present on the launch platform itself. Without authorization codes a nuclear weapon is just a big slightly radioactive pile of metal.
- photonbeam 4y agoCodes were probably just 0000 anyway
- gumby 4y agoThis situation doesn’t seem to be widely known.
- Kranar 4y agoBecause it's almost certainly false. The source for this is Bruce Blair, who while is a credible source on matters of nuclear armament, would not have been privy to this information. The DoD has refuted the claim made by Dr. Blair also insisting that he was never in a position or authorized to know these codes. Furthermore, the House Armed Services Committee which investigated this matter was unable to find anyone else to corroborate the claim. If Dr. Blair's claims were true, there would certainly be one other officer (retired by now) who would be able to confirm it as part of a Congressional investigation, and yet everyone who was in a position to know this has said the claim is false.
- ttyprintk 4y agoThanks for the recommendations!
- kens 4y agoI concur, Command and Control is a very interesting book. Also, while the Damascus Titan missile explosion is well known, there was also a horrific fire in a Titan silo in 1965 that killed 53 workers. (Weirdly, the missile present at the time was the same one in the Damascus explosion, although it wasn't armed with a nuclear bomb in the first incident.) On the topic of Titan, the Titan Missile Museum near Tucson is worth a visit if you're in the area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_Searcy_missile_silo_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_Searcy_missile_silo_fire
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y agoYour link sent me down a two-hour rabbithole involving the Vela Incident and the treatment of Mordechai Vanunu.